Insane Run

Front matter

Modernity in Question Studies in Philosophy and History of Ideas 14

Wojciech Tomasik

Insane Run Railroad and Dark Modernity

Introduction

On an illustrated correspondence card, I saw a witty drawing depicting Jungfrau mountain as a charming virgin, and the neighboring mountain Monch as a harsh old man, who looks in horror at the locomotive climbing the serpentine tracks and passing the tunnels of the virgin mountain, and then bitterly cries out: Fin de siécle!

— Teofil Gerstmann, “Letters from Switzerland”, Gazeta Lwowska, 183/1898.

Even a great disaster brings progress.

— Marion K. Pinsdorf, "Engineering Dreams Into Disaster: History of the Tay Bridge, Business and Economic History, 2/1997.

This is a book about impending catastrophe. The metaphorical "insane run” ends in the outbreak of the First World War, as my narrative stops on June 1914 and crosses this temporal threshold only on several occasions. Moreover, this is a book about smaller-scale catastrophes, which from today’s perspective were harbingers of the greater disaster of war. However, allow me to calm you, dear readers, this book focuses on European culture of the late nineteenth century and the Polish contribution. Insane Run describes the period called “fin de siecle, “la belle époque; or “modernism” Thus, the book reflects on a period that, on the one hand, was part of a whole sometimes called by experts “the long nineteenth century” and, on the other hand, it was easily distinguishable from that whole. The double status of this period at the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries occasionally leads to terminological misunderstandings. The word “modernism” sometimes labels the whole culture of the nineteenth century, but it may also serve to capture only those elements that enriched the culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. In my book, I will consequently refer to modernism in the first sense as “modernity,” and the period identified as modernity with the term “epoch of modernity.” In this epoch, I will focus on its last decades — which is modernism in the second sense — and justify my argument that the two form a peculiar unity.

The word “dark” in the subtitle expresses this peculiarity, characteristic for the epoch of modernity in two ways. The “darkening” should be understood as a metaphor of gradual and permanent devaluation of the ideal of progress, as a fading of hope that grew on the ground of rationalism, which painted the future of Europe as bright, predictable, prosperous, and safe; subject to bold and farsighted projects. These hopes were long ignited by the dynamic development of science and technology. No invention served these hopes better than the steam engine; with no other invention did nineteenth-century people establish a closer and more durable relationship. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, railroad lines became an important part of the cultural landscape of the West. And it is the railroad that most clearly shows the insane run of modernity. In the moving locomotive, the modern world saw a symbol that confirmed the main direction of civilizational changes: the endeavor to subject nature to humans completely, so that it would be fully controlled. To make the most of nature, to tailor it to the human needs, to supplement it, to remake it, and to tune it rational “gardening” plans. The main impulse for these ventures stemmed from a philosophy captured by the popular metaphor of light: the “enlightenment” The Enlightenment thought supports the birth of modernity, owing its radicalism to the event compared today with the cataclysm of the First World War: the Great Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755.

In contemporary research devoted to modern culture, we find an idea that modernity and catastrophes create an interdependent system, that the entire cultural nineteenth century develops as a derivative of conclusions from cataclysms and technological disasters.’ Those conclusions were often diverse and sometimes ingeniously practical. The rebuilt Lisbon was planned differently, as the city center saw a strict regulation of construction works, available only with a permit. Much more resistant to underground shocks than the ones destroyed, the new buildings emerged from a uniform plan carefully prepared by military engineers. Wide boulevards and vast squares replaced narrow winding streets of the capital city of Portugal. Lisbon became an urban structure that was better adapted to the needs of trade and one could now manage the city easier and more effectively: it was now a modern city. However, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake proved to be productive not only in the sphere of construction and — more broadly — social practice. It also gave a powerful impulse to the formation of opposition against treating cataclysms in religious terms: as a call to repentance and penance for sins. From resistance to passivity, there arose the Enlightenment rebellion against the indifference of God, against the unpredictable nature and

1 H. Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes, September 1959-May 1961, trans. J. Moore, New York, 1995; K. Rozario, The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and The Making of Modern America, Chicago, 2007; M.-H. Huet, The Culture of Disaster, Chicago, 2012; J. C. Alexander, The Dark Side of Modernity, Cambridge, 2013.

its uncontrollable blind forces. The productivity of disasters is the most visible in case of disasters with the greatest range and the highest number of victims. Therefore, we may compare the Enlightenment shock caused by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake — later strengthened by the events of the French Revolution - to the size of the cultural transformations perpetuated by the First World War. This war affected the entire history of the twentieth century, as the atmosphere of postwar trauma engendered later radical political ideas. Fascism and communism emerged from pacifism and populism. The former stemmed from the moods of maimed young people returning from the front, while the latter from the conviction of elite’s betrayal and the conviction that European liberalism was ineffective as it neither managed to resist the war nor mitigate its effects. National Socialism surfaced from the humiliating defeat of the Germans and the conviction that the theory of evolution provides justification for the policy of “social hygiene” and legitimizes racist aspirations.

Henri Lefebvre views the relationship between modernity and catastrophes more radically. He declares that the concept of modernity primarily filled with content the statements and discussions of those who had to face the “darker” parts of the modern world and those who sought to answer why — against loud announcements and widespread expectations — the modern world constantly engendered social crises, contradictions, and confusion. Why did the progress of knowledge and technological development not eliminate but often increased human suffering?? The assumption of such a relationship makes it easier to understand why the last decades of the nineteenth century proved particularly culturally productive. In other words, it helps understand why modernism only fully concentrated and emerged at the end of the century, though its features appear throughout the period? The end of the “long nineteenth century” (1880- 1914) bristled with various “darker” elements. They had diverse characters and ranges, but my book focuses exclusively on the case of railroad disasters. I want to show how railroad events influenced European culture, how were they productive, what traces have they left in our symbolic space, and for how long did these traces remain. The expression “dark modernity” becomes clearer when seen from the following standpoint: I am interested in the “shadows” that — as it turns out — form the necessary backdrop of enlightened optimism. For the “darkening” of the epoch of modernity meant that its philosophical backbone was increasingly often and intensely used to defend the dreams of a happy, safe, and fully predictable order. One that can be achieved by the efficient use of knowledge and

2 Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity, p. 2.

technology. One in which the individual’s freedom will not suffer when ensuring the security of whole communities.

Each railroad disaster “darkened” the age of modernity. However, it is hard to resist the impression that the most productive day recorded in the history of the West was December 28, 1879, when a hurricane struck a bridge, which partly collapsed, taking with it the passing train, killing all of its passengers and the entire train crew.’ The Tay Bridge disaster shook Europe so badly that its echoes silenced only after the sinking of the RMS Titanic.‘ This tragic event occurred in a place where modernity first showed its bright colors. The bridge at the mouth of the Tay River, the longest engineering feat of its time, was a work that inspired well-founded pride. Its designer, Thomas Bouch, gained fame and the title of a noble. Shortly after the opening ceremony on June 1878, Bouch traversed the bridge in a train with Queen Victoria as a warranty of its safety. At the end of December 1879, only after fifteen months of exploitation, a hurricane tore off the highest section of the bridge (high girders) along with the passing train. The report after the crash did not leave any doubts: the design of the bridge was poor as it did not account for wind forces, the construction was poor especially due to low-quality iron, and the maintenance was lacking. But if it was not for the conclusions from this tragedy, a second safer bridge that serves travelers to this day would have never been built. Conclusions from the Tay Bridge disaster influenced the structural safeguards applied to an even larger object: the bridge at the mouth of the Forth River. The disaster of December 1879 affected technological progress: more resistant elements made of steel took the place of cast iron constructions.

Almost every major railroad disaster from the end of the nineteenth century energized the cogs of modernization. In this sense, the disasters were culturally productive. After the catastrophe outside of the Irish city of Armagh in June 1889, British railroads introduced legal provisions that oblige carriers to use automatic brakes for the wheels of all coaches of the passenger train, which also stops the coaches at the moment of train formation breakdown. The earlier organization of train operations, based on time intervals, was replaced by blocking, which

3 Here I use J. Thomas, The Tay Bridge Disaster. New Light on the 1879 Tragedy, Newton Abbot, 1972; M. K. Pinsdorf, “Engineering Dreams Into Disaster. History of the Tay Bridge,’ Business and Economic History 2/1997.

4 A Polish newspaper recalled the disaster after over half a century, “Straszliwa katastrofa kolejowa, z której nikt nie wyszedł żywy. 250 pasażerów z całą obsługą pociągu zginęło w nurtach rzeki” (A terrible railroad disaster nobody survived. 250 passengers and staff died in the currents of a river), Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny 5/1934.

prevented a situation in which two trains would moving in the same direction would simultaneously appear on the same line. The American catastrophe in the Cascade Range on March 1, 1910, became a powerful catalyst to undertake research into the formation and development of snow avalanches. The beginning of modern psychiatry also coincides with the golden age in the development of railroad communication: the root of this branch of medicine were accidents and disabilities of previously unknown etiology. These are the insomnia that may occur among survivors after an incident, sudden anxiety attacks even among the unharmed by a disaster, or post-accidental “nervous fatigue. The development of the modern insurance system would not have happened so quickly if it were not for the risks posed by the increase in train speed and the systematically increasing passenger traffic.

When the bridge over the Tay River collapsed, the event almost instantly found its reflection in art. In order to present the post-accidental scenery in the press, sketch artists used photographs or visited the site. The visual representation of the crash site was supplemented with numerous meticulous verbal reports. Almost instantly, the echoes of the tragedy emerged in literature. A literary historian can easily name a dozen works - including broadside ballads — usually written by amateur poets and disseminated in regions close to the site.” These usually clumsy literary efforts may serve as the measure for the cultural productivity of a catastrophe. What is important for these anonymous ballads

5 The list, probably incomplete, consists of A. A. C., “The Bridge, Dundee Evening Telegraph 1880 (January 15); D. B., “The Tay Bridge Disaster,” Dundee Evening Telegraph 1880 (January 6); “Fall of Tay Bridge” (broadside ballad); G. C. S., “The Signalman's Dream,’ Dundee, Perth, Forfar, and Fifes People’s Journal 1880 (January 10); D. Grant, “The Catastrophe at Tay Bridge December 28, 1879,” Sheffield Daily Telegraph 1880 (November 18); “In Memory of the Tay Bridge Disaster” (broadside ballad); J. C. S., “The Bridge” (first line: "O, bridge of sights! O, bridge of sights!...”), Dundee, Perth, Forfar, and Fife’s People’s Journal 1880 (January 10); J. S. M., “In Memoriam,’ Dundee, Perth, Forfar, and Fifes People’s Journal 1880 (January 10); “Lamentable Lines on the Tay Bridge Disaster” (broadside ballad), “Tay Bridge” (broadside ballad; first line: “Christmas Time While Mirth Abounded...”), “Tay Bridge; December 28, 1879, Dundee Evening Telegraph 1880 (January 6); “The Tay Bridge Disaster” (broadside ballad). The list becomes more complete with the most famous poem about the tragedy — and most often published - by William McGonagall, “The Tay Bridge Disaster, The Railroad Bridge of the Silvery Tay and Other Disasters. Selected from the Works of William McGonagall, Poet and Tragedian, Died In Edinburgh September 29, 1902, London, 1972.

is mostly the very fact that they appeared, that the tragic circumstances forced someone to write, that people could not remain silent.*

The “darkening” of modernity was a very productive process for culture. Since the idea of modernity stems from the longing for a safe and predictable reality, it must have sought an ally in the continuously developing technology. However, technological development meant that train speed and precision of operations made railroad network a combination increasingly sensitive to disturbances, thus susceptible to disasters of unpredictable consequences. Therefore, at the turn of the centuries, culture had to solve problems that it partly created. I would like to connect the “darkening” in the previously outlined meaning with the one understood literally. At the end of the nineteenth century, there began a quite unusual process. Darkness found its way back to the public space, which until then had been systematically and effectively enlightened. Since many experts call the nineteenth century as the time of the “colonization of night,” then the end of that period marks the triumphant return of darkness — in the theaters, in the auditorium, in panoramas, dioramas, and “love tunnels” that awaited the visitors of American and European amusement parks.’ Therefore, this book is about catastrophes and about the new technologized media. It is about culture, in which a disaster becomes a commodity like everything else, a huge emotional load sold on a massive scale during film screenings and through devices installed in modern amusement parks.

At the end of his monograph, Kevin Rozario analyzes how the premodern understanding of catastrophe as a result of human sins returned in reports on Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans. However, in the case of the dramatic events in 2005, people did not write or talk about their sins against God but, instead, underlined the disrespectful way of treating nature and its terrible consequences.* Such perspective on catastrophes was nothing new. In fact, it had sprouted much earlier, in the late years of the nineteenth century, as it intertwined with what we would now call “ecological awareness.” The modernization process

6 ‘The Tay Bridge disaster received a literary commentary a few days after the disaster, on January 10, in Die Gegenwart newspaper ballad “Brück am Tay. (28. Dezember 1879)” by the prominent German author, Heinrich Theodor Fontane.

7 See also W. Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night. The Industrialization of Light In the Nineteenth Century, trans. A. Davies, Berkeley, 1995; especially chapter “The Stage. The Darkening of the Auditorium?”

8 Seealso Rozario, “Epilogue. A Reckoning: Hurricane and the ‘Murder’ of New Orleans,” in: Rozario, The Culture of Calamity.

that covered almost all areas of life gained momentum and contributed to the “disenchanting the world” and the weakening of religious foundations. In the Middle Ages, before undertaking the construction of a mine, people would pray to tame the earth spirits. Modernization meant that — before boring a tunnel - neither architects nor builders had to tame anyone. It sufficed to learn the laws of nature and thoroughly examine them to gain full control and use them to one’s advantage. Shortly after the Tay Bridge disaster, a poem appeared in a Dundee newspaper, the city most affected by the events. The first verses are:

In shame, O! Science, bow, / Weep for thy fallen crown, / Shed tears of blood / Upon the flood / That hides thy great renown. // Where is thy triumph now? / And where thy vaunted skill / To make all things / That Nature brings / Submissive to thy will?”

The poem discusses the sin of pride committed by the abstract Science. However, we know that it actually means the people who have laid their trust in the reliability of mathematical calculations, in the talent and knowledge of the architect, in the infallibility of the builders, and in the imperturbability of the timetable. The poems devoted to the Tay River disaster are filled with religious tone, doubt, and the fear of tomorrow, which may mean the lack of a loved one or the lack of certainty as to how things may develop. What may be called an increase in religious sentiments was not the only phenomenon that accompanied the Tay River disaster from December of 1879. It also resulted in a return to a vision of the world in which there is room for miracles, extraordinary events, and unpredictable solutions. More than two months after the disaster, the Derby Daily Telegraph reported on the discovery of mysterious objects that floated in the sea upon the shores of Norway. It turned out to be a railroad car. The writing on its side left no doubts. It was part of the train, which collapsed into the water along with the accursed bridge. There were still some clothes inside along with a travel bag with the initials “P.R?”

Polish and European nature conservation movement owns a great deal to the modernization process. The idea for a national park in the Polish Tatra Mountains was formulated as a result of heated debate on the construction of a rack railroad that would lead up the Swinica mountain. It was a long and fierce debate. A very good description of it is the title of an article, which I use as the

9 A. A.C., The Bridge.

10 “The Tay Bridge Disaster. One of the Railroad Carriages Discovered on the Norwegian Coast,” Derby Daily Telegraph 1880 (March 5). The article states that the identification was possible thanks to the name of the transportation company, Edinburgh and Glasgow Railroad. However, the actual train belonged to North British Railroad.

final chapter of this book, "Zamach na Swinice“ (The Assassination of Świnica). To call the plan to make one of Tatra peaks accessible by means ofa rack railroad an “assassination” requires one to personify nature, imbue it with features that make it an important living being that deserves and expects respect and tribute. One must first imbue the Earth punctured by railroad tunnels again with life, suffering, and memory. One must “reenchant” the illuminated undergrounds that thousands of travelers comfortably visit every day. The story The Signalman by Charles Dickens is one of the first testimonies to document how Mystery - not so long ago exiled by science — returns to the underground.”

This book consists of five chapters, each accompanied by source texts for reference. That is, the readers will find in annexes the works that I deal with in the chapters. I wish to foreground works without reprints, which today are hardly available, sometimes completely forgotten, peacefully resting in the depths of oblivion. Thus, the annexes do not claim to illustrate the way railroad fed into the literature of the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth century in topics, themes, and images. Instead, I focused on but a few features of this literature and limited my selection to what the readers will not find anywhere else. The annexes supplement the five chapters of this book.

In the first chapter, "Gołuchowski Station and Other Attractions,” I concentrate on Bolesław Prus’s experiences from his short trip to Cracow and Wieliczka Salt Mine. I emphasize the underground part of his escapade, in which I recognize a new, “precinematic” type of experience. I investigate the “machine of vision, which Wieliczka was at the end of the nineteenth century, when it produced spectacles comparable to those that would shortly become available during film screenings. For me, the essential moments of the thrilling experiences in Wieliczka are those, which soon after Pruss visit appeared in the “cinema of attractions.” Hence, this chapter reflects on mass entertainment, which functionalizes darkness and the relative immobility of audience, not their complete passivity. In my opinion, the climax of underground wanderings was supposed to be the Goluchowski Station, a structure that imitated the city and embodied the spirit of modernity. To show “where the cinema comes from,” I have selected Pruss writings, because his works show the footprint of technological development in entertainment. In Prus’s late and little-known short story "Widziadła” he created the atmosphere of early film screenings.

11 I write about it in my book Pocigg do nowoczesnosci. Szkice kolejowe (Inclination for Modernity: Railroad Essays), Warsaw, 2014, in the chapter "Wizja tunelowa” (Tunnel Vision).

In the second chapter, “A Kiss in the Tunnel? I am interested in the links between early cinema and railroads. I present the nineteenth century, which has at least several labels (the age of steam and electricity, the nervous age, the century of the industrial revolution), from the perspective that fascinated its contemporaries. For them, it was the “age of tunnels” and magnificent underground constructions, thought the greatest achievements of engineering. A tunnel stretching across miles such as an underground construction exemplifies a heterotopia, the space which Michel Foucault foregrounds as the one that resembles and contradicts its epoch at the same time. In the nineteenth century, this space is being tamed by means of two other heterotopic spaces: railroad and cinema. At the end of the nineteenth century, there emerges a particular type of joke, summarized by the title of a minute-long film: A Kiss in a Tunnel. Film productions strongly supported the process of taming tunnels — particularly the phantom railroad ride genre — along with traditional arts like literature, music, painting, and ballet. At the dawn of the twentieth century, amusement parks with their giant wheels, haunted houses, and “tunnels of love” developed the repertoire of tools used to imbue underground constructions more with familiarity.

In the third chapter, I focus on the cultural productivity of the tragic event of March 10, 1886 that happened in the vicinity of Monte Carlo. As my departure point, I select a short fragment of Andrzej Niemojowski’s poem, which appeared in his debut volume of poetry. This chapter considers the strategies of reporting tragedy. I decided to trace its two main types: canonical narratives sanctioned by law and 'counternarratives, which accentuate the fractures in the social reception of a tragedy, which allow us to speculate that tragic events enter the cultural space in various forms, depending on a community’s interests. I called one of the counternarratives the Polonization of catastrophe. A catastrophe divides — by generating narratives and counternarratives — but also connects. The Monte Carlo tragedy was an opportunity to bond around a traumatic experience, to demonstrate that in — a world drowning like a train — one also speaks and thinks in Polish.

The eponymous fourth chapter is a study of form, which researchers derive from the experiences of the French Revolution. In the subtitle, I call melodrama the railroad genre in order to demonstrate this “railroad” character in three examples. One of them can hardly be described as forgotten. It is Gustaw Daniłowskis short story “Pociąg” (The Train), which owes its name mainly to the debate on its originality. In the analysis of the story, I try to show the transformation process of a melodramatic project — which I recognize in its first edition — changed with time, how the attractive structure of tested devices is used to enhance a propagandist message. Still a melodrama, “Pociag” becomes a work about a new political power and its institutional representation: the Polish Socialist Party. My deconstruction of the story creates an opportunity to comment on its originality. I defend Daniłowski by pointing to the melodramatic poetics of borrowings and repetitions.

The fifth chapter, “The Assassination of Świnica” is an elaborate study of a discussion provoked by the project to construct a rack railroad from Zakopane to one of the Tatra peaks. Here, I foreground the culture that hegemonizes the visible. Nevertheless, I begin by analyzing the popularity of planners. At the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, planners proposed bold projects of railroad connections, some of them unimplemented to this day. Trains were supposed to become not only vehicle for comfortable intercontinental journeys that would leave ships far behind — as planes were not yet considered a competition — but also take Europeans to remote attractive places, which previously seemed out of reach.” The Świnica project would never appear, if it was not for the development of tourism at the end of the nineteenth century and if this development was not accompanied by what George Simmel called “the wholesale opening-up and enjoyment of nature.” Swinica was supposed to become the Polish Rigi mountain, which was easily accessible by a rack railroad since 1871. When Poles discussed the investment, the Swiss had already undertaken the construction process of the rack railroad onto Jungfrau mountain and they were working on an even more ambitious project: a railroad to the peak of Matterhorn. The Jungfrau line never reached the summit and stopped at the Jungfraujoch Pass, while the construction of the Matterhorn line never began. We may treat these two events as a particular type of catastrophe: one that only harm the projects of railroads and not the already functioning lines. From the resistance against “puncturing” the Alps emerged the modern nature conservation movement, while from the resistance against constructing the rack railroad to Swinica peak emerged the idea to make Tatra Mountains a national park.

In almost every chapter, I allow myself comments that exceed the time framework of the studied events. Therefore, in the first chapter, I mention the tragic results of joining fire and darkness. For instance, I reflect on the fire at a charity event in Paris and a fire in the French underground. The second chapter on the history of taming the tunnels ends with a description of a tragedy that happened on December 12, 1917, in the vicinity of the Mont Cenis Tunnel in the Alps. In the conclusion of the third chapter, I remind that the Chernobyl disaster aligned in time with the publication of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society, which foregrounds

12 See also “Para do bieguna północnego; Gazeta Lwowska 143/1892.

risk as the constitutive feature of contemporary culture. In the fourth chapter, I present the recent disaster of a German airbus (March 24, 2015) as having the potential for a future melodrama. In the ending to the chapter on Swinica, I write that the planned “assassination” partially succeeded, as masses of tourists may reach today another peak, Kasprowy Wierch, by means of a cable car. All these comments point to my conclusion that the contemporary world is still filled with “shadows.”

Chapter One The Gołuchowski Station and Other Attractions; and, On the Origins of Cinematography

Light ought to be in the shadow.

In fact the cinema of attraction[s] does not disappear with the dominance of narrative, but rather goes underground.

— Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attraction. Early Film, Its Spectator ant the Avant-Garde’, Wide Angle, 3-4/1896.

The short story “Widziadla” by Bolesław Prus could end in the following manner: "The painting has disappeared, and the salesman entered the room. We looked at our watches — its late!. . . I paid the bill. It was rather small for such delicacies... / Today, when I remind myself all those things, I think that for three hours I had a strange dream made of matters unknown and unexpected.

As we know, the original ending is different. "Widziadła” tell a story of a Lithuanian nobleman who visits Warsaw and focuses on the impressions of a film screening. The impressions are a part of the provincial protagonist’s experiences. However, there is no doubt that these experiences originated in Bolesław Pruss real experiences of his first encounters with cinematography. Prus himself experienced what I expressed above in the sentence written in italics. This narrative has no imaginary intermediary because it is the ending of his series Kartki z podróży (Travel Notes), which is a reportage from Prus’s visit to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Both fragments may set the framework for Prus’s literary biography: the first fragment is from 1911 while the second from the journal Kurier Warszawski in 1878.'* The name of the author of the first fragment

13 See B. Prus, 'Widziadła, in: Prus, Pisma wybrane, Vol. 2: “Nowele? Warsaw, 1990, p. 552; Prus, “Kartki z podróży [Wieliczka]; in: Prus, Dzieła, ed. Z. Szweykowski, Vol. 27, Warsaw, 1950, p. 235. Later, I use “W” to mark quotes from this book. Quotes from “Kartki z podróży [Kraków]” come from the same book and are preceeded by “K?” The story "Widziadła” appeared only after Pruss death. He submitted it to Stara Warszawa quarterly, but without result. It was only in 1936 that Zygmunt Szweykowski published the piece. In her monograph about early cinema, Śladami tamtych cieni. Film was renowned while the second did not yet ring a bell. Cinematography debuted in the middle of the period set by these two dates and, a few years later, theaters enriched the space of cities. Therefore, we may view Pruss biography as one in which "Widziadła” document and witness a significant cultural transformation, which Kartki z podróży foresee. The first work preserves the experience of the first film screenings, while the second work describes precinematic experiences, which later filled the screening rooms. What I have in mind here is the idea embraced nearly unanimously by contemporary film experts. Film and cinematography were not one-time inventions but rather a culmination of many past processes, which rapidly accelerated in the nineteenth century, manifested in various “machines of vision:” passages, exhibition halls, panoramas, dioramas, or magic lanterns.'* On the list of institutions that materialized the nineteenth-century “mechanization of vision” an important place belongs to the railroad journey.” Mirror, stained glass, and archaic techniques of shadow theater complete the list of mechanization platforms. The earliest expression of cinematic desire is recognized in Plato’s metaphor of the cave: a picture projected on the walls is observed by chained immobile people.'® The experiences of those incarcerated by Plato strongly resemble the peculiar nineteenth-century experience, which has not yet been discussed in the genesis of cinema. What I mean are tourist visits to the Wieliczka Salt Mine.